


Not Enough Time In A Lifetime

by firebirdschild



Category: Timeshadow Rider - Ann Maxwell
Genre: Alien Cultural Differences, Community: 31_days, Gen, Heresy, Overcoming Cultural Conditioning, Science Is Only Science Until Its Proven Wrong
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:04:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firebirdschild/pseuds/firebirdschild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merone truly does want to like her, to understand her and believe in the miracle of what this woman can do.  But a lifetime of cultural conditioning is a very hard thing to overcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Enough Time In A Lifetime

“I do not understand, still,” from her position at the teaching station, Sharia offered with a gracefully sympathetic smile.

“What you are -” Merone stopped herself just a hair short of spitting out the epithet like the obscenity she’d been raised to believe it was. This was the captain’s woman and she, Merone, was in his debt and would continue to be so until the quasi-living translator buried inside her head dragged her down into madness. Until then, she would mind her tongue, hold the slowly fracturing pieces of her self together with every ounce of stubborn Wolfin pride she possessed.

“What you are,” Merone repeated more evenly, “is a contradiction.”

“I am sorry, translator,” Sharia said with her usual unfailing courtesy, “but I cannot unmake who I am any moreso than you can.”

Merone rubbed one broad brown palm across the closely shaven strips of hair on her skull. “I know you can’t. But to unlearn a lifetime’s worth of cultural conditioning, to challenge myself to disbelieve the facts I was taught as truth based in science? No, it is more than a simple linguistics specialist such as myself can manage.”

“You do yourself a disservice, claiming what you do to be simple,” Sharia countered, gesturing toward the teaching station where she’d been struggling yet again to learn the most basic of courtesies in the harshly guttural X’tian. “I cannot even manage to correctly pronounce the most civilized of phrases and yet I have heard you speak this language and half a dozen others while assisting Kane at the bargaining table.”

“It is the machine, not myself, who understands,” Merone replied deferentially. 

Sharia shook her head, amazement still written large across her finely sculpted features. “On Za’arain we are -” she hesitated a moment, face shadowed by the pain of her error. “We _were_ , raised steeped in the shadows living and dead of our civilization’s past. They pattern every corridor, sleeping quarter, and audience chamber. It’s like a richly inlaid mosaic left behind by my cousins and my ancestors expressly for my appreciation. It would have been deeply disrespectful not to have examined them, caressed the singular beauty of their braided strands as they chase through linear time, branching off into time/then and time/now as possibilities coalesce into decisions and actions. Like the machine inside your head, my people’s past is my teacher, my tool. I could no more deny my people’s need for my talent at riding living timeshadows than you would the respect and currency you earn through your skills as a translator.”

“And yet, while I can appreciate the comparison, to me, what you do is still witchcraft, heresy of the highest order. I am sorry, Lady Sharia, but while I respect your place here, I cannot bring myself to trust you.”


End file.
